


Disclosure

by tsukiko_gori



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: F/M, GRi - Freeform, M/M, Nyongtory, bigbang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7874752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukiko_gori/pseuds/tsukiko_gori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I may have given for sure that at least them would stay the same.</p>
<p>I may have not thought that people would eventually change.</p>
<p>I may have thought that Seungri was different.</p>
<p>I may have been watching as my securities came crushing down on me.</p>
<p>I may have thought that I lost him for good.</p>
<p>I may have let bitterness swallow me whole.</p>
<p>I may have done nothing to change what was happening to us.</p>
<p>I may have come to regret what I have not done.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I'm writing this because maybe, maybe, I will finally be able to change what seem inevitable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disclosure

> _**“There is no way to be completely happy without being oblivious to the world around you”  
>  Meredith Close** _

 

 

If I could look back at four months ago, I'd find happiness. Now, I'm not ~~so sure~~ anymore.

 

 

> _**“Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once”  
>  Paulo Coelho** _
> 
>  

 

I remember one night. He was bored –or he missed me, or he felt alone... he never explained, he didn't need to– so he called me over. I took a bunch of bottles of Soju and called a cab, in five minutes I was there –we lived really close to each other– and I waited for him to come out of the building.  
It was late at night, almost four in the morning, but he knew I'd be awake working, as much as I knew he would be awake doing _anything._ We always had the same timing on almost everything.  
At four in the morning on a Tuesday in Seoul, you are bound to meet people outside –it's a place where people don't sleep– but those people are few and they don't care about you and leave you alone. When he came outside we walked to the nearest park, catching up with anything that happened in our lives. We hadn't been together for a while, I for my schedules and he for his, but we talked on the phone almost on the daily, so he knew I came back to Seoul the day before. When we arrived at a bench, the bench he always wants to sit on when we're at that park, I shivered. I didn't like the neighborhood, but I knew I was being too aware, probably from the fact I recently went to China and, although I love all of our fans, Chinese Vips could be frightening.  
We kept on talking, me opening bottles of Soju, he drinking away his while talking about his adventures. I listened, kept on listening. The aspects of his life were always interesting and it was natural for me to just let him talk. Sometimes I interrupted, my stream of conscious would blurt out the first thing that came into my mind at the mention of a certain name, of a certain subject. I would interrupt him with things I kept for my self as I knew that no body else would find them interesting beside him, not even Youngbae.  
It was past five and we had already emptied two bottles of Soju, both of us had in hand one for each, mine almost empty, his almost full as he kept on talking. I had already smoked a dozen of cigarettes, listening to him, but time flew so so fast and the sun was starting to peek through the horizon.   
I don't know how we landed on such subject, but we were reminiscing about the time we met.

«you used to test me a lot» he said, and I looked at him curiously, not really understanding what he was talking about.

«my mom told me I was a weird kid, still think I am» I answered, not really trying to deny it. 

«my mom always told me I was an idiot, still think I am» he mirrored, and I arched my eyebrows, because to me, Seungri, was far from being an idiot. He was probably the most incredible human being I knew and nothing pointed at him being an idiot. Clumsy? Yes. Silly? Even. Idiot? Never.

«you kept on pushing away each of my effort to be your friend, and I kept on coming back like a lost puppy... You would test my patience, test my loyalty, test my bounds–»

«It worked, though» I blurted out, to which he chuckled lightly.

«guess so. still... it proves I was an idiot» 

«you were...» I give in, thinking about it a bit more «but just because you let me push you so much...and what for? Me? Not really worth it. But I'm glad you stayed» I honestly don't know how he managed to stand me. I would have given up at the first push. 

I remember, though, back then, how I found endearing how he worshipped me so much. It was a first, especially since I was so used to be treated like a worthless wannabe. I had Youngbae, Hyunseung, Seunghyun and Daesung, but they saw me as I was, nothing special, they treated me evenly, although Hyunseung and Daesung treated me with respect as I was their Hyung, but behind courtesy, I was like them, a bit more bitchy, a bit more lived, but one of them nonetheless. He looked at me as if being my friend was a luxury, as if it was something special, and as the ass that I am, I looked how far he would let me push it before he'd snap. He never did, and now I depended on him as if he was a safe paradise.  
Now, I was the one that worshipped that friendship, that looked at him as if he hanged stars and moon each night, that felt jealousy towards whoever got near him, spent time with him, because I wanted to be there, always, even when I physically couldn't.

«Agh! In three hours we have a meeting!» he interrupted my thoughts before I could go further in the black hole called "possessiveness". 

«better get going then» I stated the obvious as I picked up the bottles that were scattered on the floor, and started walking, knowing he would follow.

He invited me to spend the night over and I accepted. I knew myself well enough to know that if I went back home, I would sleep through the day, missing each of my schedule, and although Seungri was a heavy sleeper like me, he planned to stay awake.

«Goodnight, Riri» I said, turning towards my bedroom door –he kept a room just for me in case I slept over, which happened often– and saw him as he was standing there, ready to close the door behind him.

«you know? The other day a friend of mine tried to call me that» he said shaking his head «I told him to never do that again» he continued, chuckling. I smiled mischievously.

«nobody has the right beside me» I stated, still grinning.

«Nobody» he confirmed with a grin mirroring mine.

I fell asleep right after he closed the door.

 

 

> _** “They don't understand, No – And they say it doesn't make sense – And they wonder why  
>  You know we got our own special language – That only we can speak – And parents never know just what it means”  
>  Dream Street – They don't understand ** _

 

 

We have many inside jokes, inside stories, and I value them all.

I remember when he went to Japan and we couldn't see each other as often as we wanted. I had my promotions, he had his, and distance was creating a void I couldn't stand as much as I pretended I could.  
I watched him on my laptop, watched how he was doing. Sometimes, if we were lucky enough, we managed to find a couple of minutes to talk through the phone, but even if I heard his cheerful voice on the other end of the phone, I knew how he could hear my longing through the long pauses I involuntarily made. Thing is I wanted to tell him “I miss you”, “when will you come back?”, “do people take care of you?” but I kept on scraping those thoughts from my head, it would have made him understand my longing, my distress and knowing him, he would have taken the first airplane to get to me.  
A couple of days later I received an envelope. It made me laugh like an idiot. Who sends envelopes in the twenty-first century? Only him. Inside there was a postcard entirely written in Japanese, full of doodles and scraped words, which made me laugh even more. I couldn't read Japanese for the life of me –he could have written down the grocery list and I wouldn't have known– but still, he did his best to be grammatically correct. Cute. Beside the postcard –that I keep inside my desk drawer– there was also a letter.  

 

Before I say what was written on the letter, I think I need to explain firstly a couple of things. During my life as a trainee at YG, I found out things about me that I couldn't point out before. I was young and naive, and most of the time I wouldn't read too much into my thoughts and considerations, but after a year or two, surrounded by adults of all kinds, I learnt the basic rules to write songs, I learnt about love. 

I always had crushes over girls, and most of the times I also got rejected, but that didn't push me away from keeping on falling in love. When I was twelve I fell for this girl that was in the other class, she was my same age and she had short hair, a pretty smile and a wonderful personality. While the other girls played among themselves, she was there playing basket with us boys, and I fell in love with the way she would run around the court, stealing the ball –breaking all the rules that could be broken– and I watched mesmerized as her cheeks turned to red from the heat. She rejected me politely, friendly, and I felt like my heart wasn't being broken but gently pushed away.   
The second time I fell in love was for this girl at my high school, at that honestly was the most horrible heartbreak I had experienced yet. After months of looking at her from afar, I came up with the stupidest excuse to talk to her via e-mail –I was a tad bit of a coward– and she went with my obviously fake excuse. I was head over hills for her. From e-mails it changed to phone calls and messages, then it was late walks around her neighborhood, and then she found a boyfriend. I confessed before, but she never answered and my cowardice and my shyness pushed me to pretend I wasn't serious, that was until she found a boyfriend and officially friend-zoned me. Could you believe it? The almighty G-Dragon being friend-zoned? One day I heard she wasn't satisfied, she told me she wasn't sure about her boyfriend, that she liked me better, and so I took my chances and went to her house, the one I dropped her off after our night strolls. When I knocked at her door, I found out it wasn't her door at all. She gave me a fake address, she made me drop her there so I wouldn't know where she lived. I later found out that after I dropped her there, a guy would come there to pick her up. You'd think that that would be enough to break my heart, to make me stop chasing her, but I was really, deeply, madly, in love with her, so the day of my birthday, while my friends were inside of my house, drinking illegally and partying like animals, I went to take a smoke and pushed away my persistent pride to write her. I asked her to forget my confessions, to put it in the past, that I missed her and that I would be ok with just being friends. She didn't reply right away. I went back in, drank with my friends, forgetting that the next day I had to wake up early to go to YG, forgetting my task to write a song, forgetting everything. When my friends were busy preparing me the cake, I felt the phone ring and glanced at it, she replied. I never ran so fast, one moment I was in my living room, the next I was in the dead night, alone. I opened the text and that was when my heart broke for the first time.   
She simply said that at the moment she had too many problems to bother with another one. 

I wrote her Lies, Haru Haru and Last Farewell and I guess that those songs spoke enough about my heart to be heard by others.

Seungri had been beside me during the heart-break, trying his best to make me feel better... Youngbae was there too, don't get me wrong, but he has always been the type of friend that tries to pacify, that tries to coo down your bitterness, that pats your shoulder and tells you that time will heal things... I didn't need that, at all. I needed a laugh, I needed someone that would make me forget and that would distract me, instead of bringing _her_ up each time he saw me. Seungri made me forget through smiles and silent understanding. That was when we promised each other we would always be there for one another and we jokingly promised that if at forty years old we were both single, we would live together and get married. He said that it would be the most "cheated" relationship in history, as we were obviously allowed to have as many mistresses as we wanted, and from there, it became our inside joke. We would argue about who was the man in the relationship, about how, although I was the manly one by character, he was the manly one physically –to which I responded with a kick that sent him on the ground– I made him notice that I was the hyung and that I brought more money, he said that those were cliches and that our "relationship" was all but conventional, so we settled on saying that «fuck it! Who cares? What cares is that we will take care of one another!» 

We agreed that there would be no one, in this planet, who would be able to take care of me and appreciate me as Seungri did, and that no one would take care and appreciate Seungri as I did, so that was enough.

 

Now, going back to the letter, he briefly talked about some escapades he anticipated me while on the phone, about that girl he met on the Set of one of his Japanese programs, how she was cute and I would like her, because she was sassy “ _Just like you, hyung_!”. It made me smile, because it meant he wasn't alone, but I was also worried, because I knew that he still was, alone, that is, and I didn't want to picture what he could do in his loneliness.

He wrote me again some birthday wishes, saying that he knew the video he published was a bit cringy, but he felt like it was more proper than a message or a phone call, he asked if I noticed the cake was my favorite one (I did) and told me that he would give me my birthday present when we'd met, and that for now, I had to make do with the letter and what I was about to read. 

Below that, written in tidy characters, the was this:

 

  
“Jiyong-hyun, you feel lonely back in Seoul? Because I do, I miss living with you and I miss your mum's cooking. I miss Dami-noona but most importantly, I miss you.   
  
Missing you had me realize that there are things left hanging between us, and so, while I was talking to a friend of mine, when he asked me where I pictured me in twenty years from now, I thought of you. Of how you, when asked the same question, had the same image as mine.   
  
We are engaged, aren't we? Well then, Beyouncé once said —don't laugh at me for the quote because I know you love the song as much as I do— that "If you like it than you should put a ring on it", and I realized, while listening to this song at a club, that we are engaged and yet, no-one has ever proposed! So here I am, asking you, Kwon Jiyong, when we'll be forty and single, because we enjoy life so much and because it'd be hard to find someone amazing as you are, will you marry me?  
  
Now, since I don't get to receive a reply right away, I decided to simplify your choice. You only have to put an "X" on the answer you want to give me:  
  
  
 [    ] Yes, obviously            [    ] OMG, a hundred times YES”  


 

I laughed so hard while I place my reply, and suddenly, all the loneliness was gone. I still wander sometimes how he did it.

 

After that letter, it became pretty much a statement, Nyongtory was real in its own way, we would bring it up as the official name of our ordeal, and Seunghyun, Youngbae and Daesung would roll their eyes at how silly we were, but we still did it, because all in all, we both agreed we were each-other's soul-mates, only platonically, but we didn't feel the need of making it real.

 

In the while I was hanging on thin rope with Kiko. When I met her, all of us in Bigbang agreed that she was funny and cool, and soon enough she begun to hang around with us, and then with me and my friends in Nuthang, and then just with me. 

Chemistry filled the air as one night she came to hang out with me in my apartment, and what innocently started as a marathon of board-games, it became flirty exchanges. I started it all, admittedly, she was sexy and cute and pretty, she made me laugh and we matched on many levels, so when she needed a loan to construct an Hotel in Incheon, I offered her the fair exchange of the loan for a kiss, and after she complied, Monopoly fell forgotten.

We had been going for three years and a half, and after a few ups and downs, it felt like things were settling into ordinary, and I hated it. I begun to question my feelings for her, for the woman I fought for during the years, but beside friendship, it became hard to see anything else. 

After thinking about it for months, I broke up with her in a way I'll despise my self for the rest of my life. 

The new freedom gave me the feel of being on top of the world, and I begun going clubbing and enjoying my life as a single young producer, and that freedom brought me my second downfall.

 

The first one was with Heartbraker, but as I knew I did nothing wrong, I never went along with the thoughts of ending it. I just talked about it with Seungri, knowing he wouldn't judge me, and he made me sober up. His presence and the presence of everyone else, made me go through each trial with my head held high, and when it was finally over, I was back to the Jiyong I was before. 

But when I received the call asking me to go and run some tests as I was suspected of doing drugs, especially after Daesung's accident, I knew I wouldn't get out of it all proudly. In fact, I didn't.

If what netizens and Vips thought about me was dreadful enough, seeing the looks of disapproval on my brother's faces was deadly. When Seungri cried out his frustration in his drunken state at me, when he knocked the breath out of my lungs with a well placed punch on my chest, when he buried his face on my shoulder, I felt like my all being was crying along with him. Youngbae saw it, and although I didn't deserve it, after twenty minutes or so, he pissedly detached Seungri from me and led him to his bedroom in our new dorm, but the dice had been cast, the milk already spilled, and the dump broken. I was a mess in and out and I didn't leave my room until Youngbae dragged me out of it.

 

I spent the remaining years trying to build up their trust again, and after a long while, me, Daesung and Seungri were back on our feet, our scandals on our backs, watching us silently.

 

You may wander why I'm telling you all this, but it's because it is part of a journey that brought me here today, wondering how what four months ago I considered as happiness, now it has turned to a doubt. 

When I think about it, it comes to the conclusion that four things made my doubts rise, the first being my possessiveness.

When in December Seungri begun his travel across the globe, I found myself calling him more often than usual, and when at the beginning he answered with excitement, after a while he begun not answering and telling me that he had been busy. I felt like I had been too much present in his life, to the point of boring him with my talks about songs I wrote or fashion shows I attended, so I begun asking about him alone, and he talked more excitedly, telling me about his adventures, until that stopped too. I begun to feel salty about how he didn't notice no word was spoken about me, about how he didn't even ask, and it may have been distance, but I felt I was slowly losing him, and I wandered if my present for his birthday was the second reason of our distance.

You see, when the twelfth of December came, I already had written a letter for him, mirroring the present he gave me years prior, only that in this one, there was attached the actual present, a ring.   
It may seem cringy and all, people told me so. My mum, Dami, Youngbae, Seunghyun... But it was a thing between us two, and I knew he would appreciate it. The ring was simple, a silver band that complimented his features, and although I just meant it as a simple jewelry piece, I jokingly made it pass like an engagement ring in my letter, quoting, as he did, Beyoncé, in the same song he made a point in each of our concerts.   
When he read my letter, he smiled and laughed, and then his eyes watered at the sincere words in it, and after reading it, he took the ring and put on his ring finger, giving me a hug that filled my lungs of affection. 

When he begun ignoring me, I started wondering if that was one of the reasons.

Then, out of the blue, a girl came out, he begun seeing her, and not seeing us, and I barely know anything about her, because she appeared just as Seungri begun disappearing.

The fourth reason was a rising doubt. A doubt that had me sleepless at night, a doubt that a dear friend of mine brought to me in shape of a question and that kept on repeating in my mind as a broken record:

 

“Are you in love with Seungri?” and the fact I couldn't answer, turned my universe upside-down.

 

 

> _** “No-one expects the rug to be yanked out from underneath them,  
>  life changing events usually don't announce themselves” ** _
> 
> _** Slash ** _

 

 

 

 

> _** “This time I would choose to err on the side of illogic. I had to trust intuition, and plunge as I had never plunged before, with blind faith.”  
>  —Dean Koontz, Forever Odd— ** _

 

 

I talked on the phone with my mother and my sister Dami, they told me I was exaggerating when I voiced out my worries. They told me that Seungri had just been busy over the past months, and that I should have known better than anyone what it meant, and what his schedules were. I'll admit they were partly right and that, after talking with them, I felt like I was making a huge deal out of nothing, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was actually being avoided, and I couldn't explain myself why.

 

Yeah, the reasons I came up to seemed valid and all, but it was also true a load of other things. 

First, although our conversations back in December and January had became centered around the songs I wrote, it was also true that Seungri was the one to ask about them. He was enthusiast about the fact that I didn't have my writer block anymore, and the fact that I told him that talking with him helped a lot in that, on how his opinion on my songs helped me day by day to develop them, made him elated. Other than that, as I already told, as soon as I felt like I was boring him, I stopped, and it lasted for a while before he suddenly disappeared, so I excluded that possibility as it ended up with me knowing everything he did over the months of December and January, and him not knowing a thing I've been up to until June.

Secondly, my present. I begun to notice that he wore it always, sometimes he would put it away, but each time I saw him, he was wearing it, even at Mama's Awards, so if it really bothered him, knowing him, he wouldn't wear it, but there he was, showing the ring to the world and to our fans, so I took aside this reason as well.

Thirdly, the girl he started seeing. Talking to Daesung, I discovered that things weren't going strong for the two of them. I discovered how Seungri felt like she didn't understand him nor his way of living his life. I found out how he felt extremely pissed each time they met and how the two of them fell into arguments more often as time went by. Apparently, she was bothered by his busy schedule, she had told him she couldn't wait for him to finish filming and attending our fan-meetings, and how this kind of thoughts she had made Seungri even more pissed off, as after all the time they spent dating, she still hadn't understood that he loved being busy, that he loathed the free time and that once he finished a certain schedule, he always made sure to have a new one to keep him moving. She also demanded him to always write one another, and how he felt annoyed by how much she was suffocating him. This last part made me feel a mixed emotion of confusion and elation. He never did this to me. I admittedly prefer phone calls than texts, and so does he, but he never felt bothered by our constant keeping in touch, if anything, he was the one to call me the most, and I would call him only when I had the gut feeling that he didn't want to annoy me.

Fourthly, my confused feelings for him were something I kept hidden as I still hadn't ruled them properly. I hadn't seen him enough to know if what I felt was friendship or romance, and although I admitted to myself way back when I was a trainee that I was attracted to both men and women, I always preferred women and never experienced anything with the other sex. Both for fear and for the fact I hadn't found anyone that stimulated me enough to initiate anything.

 

 

> _**“True friendship is like a rose: we don’t realize its beauty until it fades.”** _
> 
> _**—Evelyn Loeb—** _

 

 

So all in all, I was still confused. He did ignore me though, of that I was sure. 

 

During fan-meetings he would choose other pairs, in the backstage he would be anywhere but with us, and after our fan-meetings, he would disappear with his manager.

 

I did my best to create occasions to be with him, to find out if I was being paranoid or anything, but while we were on stage, each interaction I initiated with him felt more like fan-service from his side, and each time we met in our free time, he would either gather Daesung and Youngbae with us, making any meeting less and less private by sharing it on his SNS, or if I managed to meet him alone, he would keep his distance from me, and that honestly made my stomach sink.

 

I voiced my preoccupation with Youngbae and he told me that he understood my point of view, but he also told me that as far as he knew, Seungri was acting as usual, and that if I was right, he too wouldn't know the reason behind it. 

When I talked again with my mother and Dami, they both told me that from what I told them, I seemed right, that he indeed looked like he was avoiding me, and that if I wanted to solve things with him, I had to talk to him directly. I didn't have the guts to do it.

I always had a soft spot for him, if I ever was bothered by anything he did, if I ever put my mind into being angry at him, only seeing him, just his smile, merely a stupid excuse, made my anger simmer and every thought of being mad at him would end up in the dumpster.

I didn't want that. I wanted for him to reach out to me. I wanted him to realize how he missed me, how we grew apart. I wanted him to come at me and tell me what went wrong, and in the while, for this once, I wanted to keep my anger within me. It may seem stupid, but I had my pride, and never I let anyone walk over it but my dearest friends. I would let my pride aside for once or twice, but by the time bitterness reached me, I felt like I had been letting Seungri walk over my pride more than anyone, and I felt like I had given him the illusion, across the years, that it was ok to do so, as I always forgave him. I was tired of it, so I didn't reached out... almost.

I wrote him messages with the excuses of work, he replied monotonously and I let the topic drop. I called him a couple of times during March, he answered the second time and after five minutes he had already hung up on me. During that brief conversation, he said that he had been busy and that he didn't want to bother me as he assumed I was busy too, that when he thought of calling me it was always late and he worried that I was asleep. I pretended I believed and understood him, but throughout our entire conversation and afterwards, my mind screamed “ _bullshit_ ”.

 

After that, I basically bothered everyone I knew with this, and everyone told me that perhaps I had lost my best friend.

 

I thought they were right.

 

 

> _**“I wanted to escape from love, but I didn't know how”  
>  —Ding Ling—** _

 

 

Anger arose within me, and after a while, the month of June was spent trying to keep myself away from the pit of depression, but for the life of me, I couldn't.

I tried to gain his attention by posting anger filled images on both my private and public accounts, images about lost friendship, I thought I was being too obvious, but after publishing on my private account the song "[don't Speak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3Vdo5etCQ)", which was blatantly obvious who it was referred to, he still hadn't got the clue, or maybe he did but he was silently agreeing with me. So a drowned my sorrow in bottles of Tequila and hefty clubs, and just like that June passed and with it, I decided to let go.

 

As my decision caught up with my heart, the answer to Soohyuk's innocent question, came to me. _I fell in love with Seungri_.

 

It was the only explanation to how hurt I was inside, to how deeply butchered my heart felt, and it was beyond cruel finding out like that, because I honestly felt helpless, so I decided to disappear myself. 

As July came, I was gone from Seoul. I would travel to Jeju, to Germany, to England, to France, everywhere to be as far as I could from the constant reminder I had been discarded by the most important person in my life. It helped, if only a little. 

 

I met people that would take my mind off Seungri, I partied away my thoughts of him, but life wasn't by my side, and although Kwon Jiyong needed being away, G-Dragon had to be back in Seoul for our schedules.

 

Meeting him again after finding out my feelings about him, may have been the hardest thing to do in my entire life. We had to stick together for our Movie's promotions and do many other fan-meetings, and that basically meant being with him almost everyday. Luckily he had his own schedules in China, and as a part of me felt broken by the unusual distance between us, the other part was glad of not having him around too much. He was a constant painful remainder of a lost friendship and what I felt could never be a relationship. I drowned my self again in alcohol and heavy beats.

 

 

> _**“I thought about the days I had handed over to a bottle..the nights I can't remember..the mornings I slept thru... all the time spent running from myself.”  
>  — Mitch Albom, For One More Day—** _

 

 

My friends had been pestering me about celebrating, and although all I wanted was to stay at home and sleep away my sadness, they convinced me to go out and have fun.

The club was packed but we got ourselves a private room. My name was a guarantee of waves of people right in front of the club, even more photographers trying to snatch a shot that would be worth the front page of a magazine, but I had none of that.

I had been jumping around for weeks, doing just about everything to take my mind off of sexual and romantic thoughts about Seungri. I had hardly regained a some kind of relationship with him, as he no longer avoided me. It had taken a lot of sugar coating by my side, treating him preciously as if he was made of glass, like you treat a stray cat you're trying to feed. Little step after little step, I had felt more comfortable around him, but I felt like an elephant walking between ancient Chinese vases, trying my best to not have a faltering step that would brake everything around me. But it was hard.

I tried not thinking about the way he would be way too wary around me, how he would bitterly reply to my jokes and my teasing, but as I thought back to our movie premiere, to our fan-meetings, to our interviews and to our exhibition broadcast, it was hard not to think about it. He seemed angry at me, pissed off, annoyed, and I really had no idea of the reason.

 

So back to my early celebrated birthday. I wasn't in the mood from the very moment I stepped in the club, up until the day before, everything I did felt wrong, and although I tried, my mind was filled with thoughts of him. Good, bad, scary, arousing. I couldn't divert my mind from all the images of him and only him, I felt screwed. 

So again, alcohol showed up in my hands and I gladly took it, and after an entire bottle of Tequila, I blacked out.

 

The day of my birthday arrived and my phone was flooded with birthday wishes, both by relatives, friends, acquaintances, fans, colleagues... _his_  was the only name missing in all of that endless list. It only made my previous suspicion being confirmed, and I felt awful.

When lunch time came, I was slumped on my countertop, scrolling through my phone and looking at all the fan-arts dedicated to my birthday, but although I appreciated all the care I was surrounded by, my mind kept on diverting to that person, to his missing voice.   
I had already had a birthday convo with Seunghyun, Daesung and Youngbae. All of them wishing me happy birthday in different ways. Seunghyun pretended he didn't remember, but I rolled my eyes throughout the entire conversation, laughing inside at his antics of making me think he didn't know. When the conversation ended, I received a massage from him, and I laughed my ass off at the video of him dancing with Daesung along the notes of [2 Chainz's Birthday Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y34jC4I1m70). 

Useless to say that song stuck with me the entire day.

Youngbae and I had a long conversation, in which we talked about just anything. What I wanted to do that day, how things were going, if I had fun at my early birthday party... all of that. Then, all of them sent me another round of Birthday wishes on our group chat, and that was when Seungri finally showed up, sending me the coldest wishes I ever received from him, and I stared at the message for almost half an hour, before my mum, my dad and Dami showed up at my door with all the ingredients for a good Seaweed soup.

I tried not to think about Seungri's coldness, but throughout the entire lunch, my mind was elsewhere.

That night I was dragged once again to another club, and this time I didn't resist, I needed the haze liquor provided me, and so, once again, I drowned in it. 

Of that night I barely remember drunkenly posting on my Instagram a video of me dancing that Soojoo took with my phone and snapchatted it to all of my friends. Beside that, it's all black from the moment I finished my first bottle of Tequila, barely mixed with mint syrup (it was a very horrible idea coming from Xin, it literally tasted like window-cleaning soap) but I drank it all anyway, before buying an entire bottle and drinking directly from it.

 

 

> _**“In whine there is truth”** _
> 
> _**—Erasmus, Adagia—** _

  
 

The morning after came with an unpleasant headache and the nagging feeling of having done something terribly wrong. The confirmation to that feeling came in form of blurred images and slurred words. I tried my best to order those confusing memories in my head and, as I did, I felt like dropping on my knees in front of a toilet bowl. I went at Seungri's.

 

It took a while to have my memories back, but they all led to me disappearing from my group of friends to call a cab. I slurred the address of his condo and I hunched my way to his door. I remember pressing my finger on his ring bell and never take it off, probably waking up the neighborhood as I did so. Then, my finger wasn't on the button anymore and my hand was in his hand. I recognized it through my haze by his chubby fingers and the ring still on it. 

I remember standing up with his help and laughing hysterically as I watched his face that at the time seemed funny, I remember breaking into tears right after as I saw I was the only one laughing, I remember coughing through my tears as my throat clogged up. I remember the coldness I felt as I saw his hand leaving my and dropping to his side.

«why?» I remember choking out, and I remember repeating that question over and over again, louder and louder with the hope it would reverberate through his entire cold being. I remember how anger arose as he remained silent, and I remember hitting him on his chest, on his shoulders until my fist opened up and my palm rested on his chest as I hung my head low. 

«why» I remember I whispered while tears were still gliding out of my eyes. I then looked up at him and I think I saw his eyes waver, as if he was hesitating on whether giving me an answer or letting me do whatever I was doing. I remember than that I felt so heavy, incredibly heavy, as if the amount of emotions flooding in me had an actual weight, and how I only thought of a way to lift my self from the mountains I felt on my shoulders.

Then, I remember as his face was nearer and nearer, until all I could see were his lips, until I couldn't see them anymore, until I couldn't see anything anymore.

I don't know how long passed with me pressing my lips on his, but then I felt pain, and as my reflexes caught up with me, I was against his apartment door and his arms were extended, dropping the hint of how he pushed me away.

Then... then I broke. I wailed like a child, crooked, choking on my own sadness, asking again and again “ _why_ ”. I was left like that for eternities, to me at least, until he seemed to give in, scooping me up from the floor and dragging me to the street. 

When the cab arrived I hung on him like a baby not wanting to separate from his mother his first day of school, shacking my head pathetically while chanting “ _no_ ”s in hope he would comply, he would let me stay, but he was adamant and he opened me the door of the cab, pushing me unceremoniously so I would enter. Then, I did something I would regret, as it was the clearest memory among all the others. 

I flayed my arms, not caring if the driver saw me acting up, and I pushed Seungri again and again, anger boiling in me, and when he caught my arms, stopping me from sending him to the ground, he roared.

«STOP.  FUCKING STOP ALREADY» and that was the last drop. I growled like a caged lion, bearing my teeth as I let out every emotion I held within.

«CAN'T YOU SEE?» I asked him, shoving his hands away with a strength I didn't know I owned.

«CAN'T YOU FUCKING SEE THIS IS ALL YOUR DAMN FAULT?» and I saw him falter, but I didn't give him much time to think a reply as I pushed him once more. He stumbled back, fazed, and that only grew my anger. I was mad at the fact he didn't realize how fucking badly he had damaged me, how he didn't even take in consideration how broken I was and all because of him.

«I LOVE YOU! CAN'T YOU SEE IT?» I shouted once more, and he flinched as if my words had cut him deep, although those words shouldn't have.

« _can't you fucking see it?_ » I repeated my question in a whisper, and after that, it was black.

 

 

> _**If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person. It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.** _
> 
> _**—William J. Clinton—** _

 

There was a part of me, the next day, that wanted to call him and apologize, but I didn't.

Every fiber of my mind thought about the previous night as something regretful, but deep inside, I wasn't agreeing with it.

I had made mistakes over the past, I made my apologies for them, but this once, I didn't think it was the best idea as I didn't regret it, not entirely. 

 

Things had been strained between us long enough, it was almost unfixable before, I just gave it the last hit before everything broke apart, but as I kept thinking about it, it was only matter of time before it happened. So I didn't call him, I didn't send him messages, I used the entire day of the 19th in modesty. I uploaded a picture of some donations I did on my birthday, as I felt I didn't need anything for my birthday but many others did. I was “lucky” enough. Then I posted my birthday wishes to our group that officially aged of 10 years, and after that, I lazed around my house.

I was strangely calm, especially since when I woke up I was a mess, but after I went through my thoughts, everything seemed so much weightless, maybe my actions had to down on me yet, but I decided to take the peace I was enveloped in at the moment, so I watched some movies, I called Bae, Dae and Seunghyun, avoiding Seungri at all costs. I would see him the next day, so I didn't need to butcher my self any further, especially since I was so tranquil that day.

 

When the night came, though, I couldn't sleep.

 

Every fiber of my body was awake, and when the time to go to the Concert Hall came, I hadn't had a wink of sleep. 

Rehearsal was brutal to my nervous system, but I was sure Seungri knew I remembered everything, I didn't even try to conceal the look of hurt in my eyes.

By the time our Concert had to begin, everything caught up with me once again, I begun to think that my feelings were kind of laggards, as they always arrived at the worst of times, but I had no time to organize a thought, the concert was about to begin, the roars of the crowd arrived all the way to where I was seated as I was dolled up for the cameras, and so, once again, I reached the flask I always had with me for emergency occasions, and I downed a hefty amount of Vodka that went right to my system as I hadn't eaten anything all day.

 

 

That night, my performances were shit, the only thing I would save was the little bit of dance routines I did with surprising fierceness, but beside that, my mike didn't work, my breath was uneven, my inears gave me the sounds delayed, my throat was a scratchy bitch, and my mind was so hazy I found myself forgetting lyrics I should have known as the back of my hands. 

It didn't help that Seungri fled each time I went near him, glancing around him to see if I was somewhere within ten meters from him, or checking on me if I was following routines and was at my pre-decided places. Still... I noticed that although he checked on what _I_ did, he still gravitated towards me. It arrived to a point in which I would just do my thing and I would find him there beside me. It surprised me to the point I found my self searching for any kind of fan-service in his actions, but I couldn't. It was _him_ , _he_ was the one walking to me, not the maknae adoring his Leader, his hyung, and I didn't know how to decipher this new found notion.

 

When, after the show, he invited me to his club, my jaw threatened to drop, but I accepted anyway, and passed the following two days nervous as I was too curious about what it meant.

 

It meant nothing. That's what I bitterly thought throughout the night. 

 

After a brief talk with Seunghyun, I found out that the invitation was towards all of us and that Daesung and Youngbae just couldn't attend. Apparently Seungri thought it was a nice idea to celebrate our 10th Anniversary together at his club. 

When I heard that, my eyes dropped to the floor. 

I received a message from the troops, they invited me to Cake Shop on the same night, and although it may seem childish, I was tired of all this stupid game, of me chasing after him, of me choosing to keep myself at the same level of his friends, I wanted to be either everything or nothing to him, and so I accepted right away, ready to blow my mind for the thousandth time.

 

 

Cake Shop was one of my favorite clubs. People there lost any inhibition, Drag Queens walked among us as if they weren't considered wrong in the nation, people made out regardless of all the rules Korean Culture drew upon them, alcohol flowed like rain, music boomed through each wall, and you were free of every bound you were trapped before walking in. 

Soojoo cooed me to dance, Xin to smoke and I had always a glass of Rum in my hand. I shook my head all around and when Kiko showed up, I couldn't care less. I was too far gone. Beside, a lot of time had passed since I broke up with her, she had found someone new and when she came to drop a kiss on my cheek, I didn't feel any hard feeling from her. Any small worry that my night would be ruined, flew out of the window, and so I shook my head in time with the DJ's choice.

A lot of my songs came up, he knew me and my squad so of course he had already made the set list so I would be included. It became a routine, he would put on my songs and I would occasionally take the mike to sing along, when Baauer's Temple came up and mine and M.I.A.'s voice filled the club, I was on the route of full drunkenness,  and as my head shook side to side along the beat, my phone vibrated and I was left to choose whether fish out my phone or completely forget it.

I wasn't enough drunk for the second option so I fished it out of my pockets and quickly regret it.

 

Seunghyun wrote me that Seungri had been looking for me everywhere, and “where the fuck are you?!” were his precise words. 

 

The moment the notion of Seungri looking for me entered my mind, there was no-way I could push it out, so I simply waved my friends and called a cab, then, I was at Monkey Museum.

 

I stood in the cab for a long while, looking at the entrance with found lucidity. The drive had given me enough time to sober up and now I was already reconsidering my choice of running to him. I mean... if he really was looking for me, why wasn't the one to reach out? Why did he make Seunghyun do it? And then I wandered if he even made Seunghyun do it, if maybe he just asked him where I was and Seunghyun gave the question too much importance.

But I knew it wasn't the case. Hyung was one to never get particularly distressed, especially in stead of others, so if he contacted me, it meant Seungri made him think it was better if he did. I didn't want to think about the implications of that, so with a short pep-talk, I walked out of the cab and entered the club, with not little amount of difficulty as it was packed outside.

 

As soon as the bodyguards recognized me, I was directed towards the VIP area, and then I found my self at the same booth of my hyung, who was now looking at a girl intently, as she drank from a flute of Champagne while she eyed him with the same amount of maliciousness. I needed a drink.

 

After finally warming up to the place, I started to flicker my eyes towards the DJ booth, and then, I stopped acting like an idiot, trying to be subtle when I declared I would be no-more, and my eyes stopped the fight, I stopped looking around each time I thought I was staring too long, and finally let myself do what I really wanted to do, unabashed, I stared.

 

My mind was running over his body, scanning each inch of it, taking in the glimmer the lights set on his hair, his flushed face as he danced, his exposed forearms as he worked the console, and I found myself immersed in thoughts of my tongue running over the exposed skin, my hands gripping his black strands, my groin dirtily assaulting his. I licked my lips for moisture as the thoughts invading my mind were getting my throat dry, and I brought the glass of whatever to my lips, trying to attend the scorching thirst that overcame me.

A light tap on my shoulder brought some sense back to me, and I diverted my gaze to look at the intruder, only to find a waiter handing me a piece of paper. I took it with hesitation, but when I looked at the writing in it, I was shocked to find out it came from the same person I hadn't detached my eyes from for the past hour or so.

How did he manage to write me when I had my eyes locked on him the entire time?

The only answer was that he prepared it beforehand, and that thought made my insides churn in expectation and fear. It said that after the party was over, he'd wait for me at his apartment.

As soon as I read it, I fled.

 

 

> _**What we should fear it is not failure, but the heart that is no longer brave enough to take risks and embrace challenges.  
>  —Kwon Jiyong—** _

 

 

In love and war wins who runs. This sentence comes from one of my trips to Paris, and as I learnt it at the time, I thought it was right. Now, I felt like a loser, as I let the driver lead me towards my penthouse. 

Why was I so deeply scared? 

There was no need of being a genius to know the reason. Seungri wanted to meet me, talk to me alone, and I knew where the topic would lead to, he would reply to my previously confessed feelings. I was a turmoil of contradicting emotions. 

I stated before to myself that I wanted whatever situation I was with Seungri to end. That all or nothing didn't matter as it would finally let my mind rest. My heart was frail, it was weak. Months spent lurking in search on any light that wasn't provided by him, trying to rehabilitate itself in an orbit that didn't gravitate around his existence, and now, the deaf peacefulness given by ignorance, was threatened by a final verdict from the one that started that riot.

I wanted it to end and I wanted it to stay in the blind limbo it was in.

I wanted his answer yet I didn't want to hear it.

 

Books, novels, movies, dramas... that was where happy endings existed, where inexplicably the sentiments of the main characters were mutual, where in the same circumstances, Seungri would tell me how much he loved me as well, how he was scared to ruin our friendship and such, but I couldn't lie to myself.

As far as I knew Seungri was beyond straight, he only gawked at girls, and even if he was like me, it would be part of a small percentage if he had the same feelings for me as I had for him. I couldn't lie to myself enough convincingly to let me believe even for a second that I would end up happy or ok if a went to his. I needed to clear my mind hazed by alcohol enough to think it through, it was early enough to make my decision and go with it, so I walked straight in the shower as soon as I entered my door.

 

Upon a long talk with my more reasonable side, I decided that the right choice was to go and receive my blow. He deserved rejecting me as much as I deserved confessing to him. 

I would not become a shadow of myself. I would not turn into a weakling that didn't know how to face failure. My heart was beaten to pulp, my soul was a blur of fading colors, but love wasn't about being selfish, I told my self as I rode the cab for the nth time that day, love was about the other, and I would do it for Seungri.

 

I made sure the party was over by looking at the thousands of posts of leaked footage of Seunghyun hyung and Seungri leaving the club, noticing, by the pout the older portrayed, that it didn't go well with the girl his eyes were feasting on ours before.

With that little distraction, the five minutes to his home ended, and I was at his front door, unsure as to wait for him or to ring the bell to announce I arrived. 

The door opened, taking away the choice from me, and I was pulled in his foyer hastily, before the door closed behind me.

 

«I was afraid you wouldn't come» he said, rather murmured, but I heard him anyway and preferred to keep silent, instead of admitting that I almost didn't.

He looked at me, really looked at me, and I felt exposed. My nerves were killing me, but the classes we took at YG in our trainee days about body language, were enough to not portray how nervous I felt inside, then, he sighed, heavy and deep, and dread was all over my being as I waited for him to plant the knife deep.

 

«Listen, hyung... what you told me the other day, was true, wasn't it?» and I just nodded silently because I knew my voice would crack even with merely a “yes”.

«how am I supposed to... digest _this?_ » and the question per se sounded so cruel, so bitterly butchering, as if he rubbed the skin into irritation before planting the blade deep inside. 

 

“digest” I found out was an awful expression referred to a confession.

 

«are you not happy with how we are? do you need more?» he asked with an innocence that pulled words out of my mind, words I never voiced in all the nine months that brought us so far.

«happy? _happy_?» I made s snorting sound that had him flinch. He obviously didn't expect my outburst, but once again, he managed to make me burst like a balloon getting near the sun.

«are you fucking kidding me?» it was really a question from my side, because it was plain ridiculous the only fact he dared to call happiness what I should have been feeling all this time, even after he saw me broken right in front of his house.

«should I be happy of you getting away from me? should I be happy about the distance you put between us? should I be happy of the friendship that _you_ made disappear? should I be happy when I lose you day after fucking day? Uh? SHOULD I!» I was full blown, and I was approaching him menacingly as he backed away from me at each biting word of mine. The finger I pointed at his chest felt like it was melting his core, and he looked as if instead of words I had been slapping him the entire time.

«than is about friendship» he let out, and my burst came to an end as I watched him speechless while he regained his composure.

«if this is about friendship, then so be it! Let's be friends again, isn't it enough?» his question was disarmingly reasonable. 

 

Friendship should have been enough, should have been a proposal I should have been glad to take, but I couldn't picture myself being his friend anymore, in fact, I think I never did. Every time I thought of him, even in the past, it was more like thinking about a lover, the affection, anything felt towards him, was that of a man in love, and who was I kidding? That ring spoke of a promise that had nothing to do with inside jokes.

All or nothing, I reminded myself, and so I shook my head at him.

 

«I can't» I whispered in the quietness of his living room, and even a breath could have resounded in the air as a shout.

«why?» I didn't dare to look at him, so I let my mind picture the expression on his face.

«because I want you, I want there to be an us, and if not, I want it to be empty when it's looked in between us» and my heart was now ready, I had given it enough time on its chair before pushing it aside and let it hang on the sturdy rope, so I looked up at him with the determination of a man headed to the guillotine, and let him do the honors of cutting the rope so the blade would descend upon me.

«why do you have to make everything I did up until now crumble because one day you decided you loved me? Why each and every of my effort of keeping away from you has to crumble down with your selfishness» and my eyes opened up, because his words led me to an interpretation I discarded on my way to his door that very night. Because I condemned my life to the cruelty of not being a novel, to never have its happy ending, because I was the one who knotted the rope around my heart and that put the chair below its feet, and I couldn't believe that what I thought he meant could not be a misinterpretation.

«why would you do that?» I asked in hope of a more clear declaration.

«because having you near was like being tied one foot away from happiness. Because being with you was like hell and heaven at the same time, as I wanted and never received» he seemed weak with each word, and so I made myself weaker by dropping at his feet as he looked upon me from his couch.

«so you love me» and I held his hands in an attempt to alleviate his conflict, but he pulled them away forcefully, angrily, and I watched stunned the frustration that surfaced on his handsome features.

«yes! YES! but that doesn't change anything, does it?» he was bitter, beyond enraged, and I was deeply confused and still hazed by his admission. I made my way to straddle his legs in an intimate posture I never thought I would be in, and cradled his face in my larger hands, forcing him to look at me.

«why?» I simply asked, as I deeply watched his eyes change each passing moment right in front of me.

«because _we can't_ » and I knew what he meant, I perfectly did, but I decided that I didn't care, so I pressed my lips onto his in a slight peck, and leaned my forhead against his.

«we can, and we will» and with those last words, I signed my declaration by kissing him longer and deeper, until his hands weren't resting defeated by his sides anymore, but were on my hips, on my shoulders, on my back, and that night, he let me love him.

 

 

 

> _**I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it.**_  
>  _**[...] This part of my life... this part right here? This is called "happiness" ”**_
> 
> _**—The pursuit of happiness—** _

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> So here it ends this story.
> 
> this is a story I had laid out for a while now. It follows, strangely, true events that happened to me and that I felt fitted well with what I've seen happen to Nyongtory throughout the years. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. As I said before, this story is based on actual events that happened in my life, so if it may cause confusion to any of you, like dates or behaviors you don't think are true, or fitting, it is merely because the time is based of the year I passed so far, and how my story developed. Not everything is life-based, I did check some events but many others were made up and born from my fantasy. 
> 
> I of course am not stating any of this happened to either Jiyong or Seungri, nor that I own the characters, nor that the events ever happened. 
> 
> Aside from all of this, I hope you enjoyed reading this short story I begun writing in June out of frustration and deep sadness.


End file.
